Download a Book Today!

First Across The Continent

This product is for download only.

An Excerpt: "The weather rapidly grew so warm, although this was early in April, that the men worked half-naked during the day; and they were very much annoyed by clouds ofmosquitoes. They found that the hillsides and even the banks of the rivers andsand-bars were covered with "a white substance, which appears in considerablequantities on the surface of the earth, and tastes like a mixture of common saltwith Glauber's salts." "Many of the streams," the journal adds, "are so stronglyimpregnated with this substance that the water has an unpleasant taste and apurgative effect." This is nothing more than the so-called alkali which hassince become known all over the farthest West. It abounds in the regions west ofSalt Lake Valley, whitening vast areas like snow and poisoning the waters sothat the traveller often sees the margins of the brown pools lined withskeletons and bodies of small animals whose thirst had led them to drink thedeadly fluid. Men and animals stiffer from smaller doses of this stuff, which islargely a sulphate of soda, and even in small quantities is harmful to thesystem.Here, on the twelfth of April, they were able to determine the exact course ofthe Little Missouri, a stream about which almost nothing was then known. Nearhere, too, they found the source of the Mouse River, only a few miles from theMissouri. The river, bending to the north and then making many eccentric curves,finally empties into Lake Winnipeg, and so passes into the great chain ofnorthern lakes in British America. At this point the explorers saw great flocksof the wild Canada goose. The journal says:-"